


The Final Hit of Beecham and Hatch

by johnsmoore



Category: The Alienist - Caleb Carr
Genre: Gen, John is fragile and just needs a hug, Laszlo and his pureness, Post-Book(s), Sara and her usual gun threats, Spoilers, Stevie is a sweetheart but when he gets his chance to bully John he takes it lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 10:20:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12166986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnsmoore/pseuds/johnsmoore
Summary: After the events ofThe Angel of Darkness, John takes drastic steps in avoiding the friends he'd gotten so close to, going as far as allowing himself to wallow away in loneliness for months. However, his friends aren't having any of it, and when put into an involuntary position, the truth comes out.





	The Final Hit of Beecham and Hatch

**Author's Note:**

> So, I just recently read _The Alienist_ and then _The Angel of Darkness_ , and BOY OH BOY do I love the heck out of those books and all the characters in them! (*cough* except for a certain Beecham and Hatch *cough*)
> 
> I was in _dire_ need to write a fic for this fandom, and it took a while for me to get inspired with an idea. But, once I had it, I rolled with it, and this is what I coughed up!
> 
> Enjoy!

“How are you holding up, John?”

Barely registering Laszlo’s question, John merely glanced over towards his friend, humming in a way which would hopefully satisfy the Doctor’s significant worry over him before averting his eyes back down to his tightly clasped hands, his knuckles turning white.

He was sat on a black leather sofa in Laszlo’s office which resided in the furthest corner of the room, away from the Doctor’s desk where John could feel his friend scrutinizing him. He began to unconsciously tap his foot lightly against the floor.

“John, there is something on your mind. You’re here for a reason, are you not?”

He glanced up again, his lips forming a hard line as he debated with his current thoughts. A few more moments of silence passed between them, the heel of his dress shoe tapping away at an increasing pace against the hardwood floor as the only source of sound filling the room.

“John, if this is about Rup—”

John’s foot ceased its tapping motion instantaneously. “It’s not,” he interjected quietly, the first words he’d spoken that day and mentally slapping himself for sounding so frail with his response. “It’s not,” he repeated, this time louder and hopefully having convinced Kriezler. He ignored the way his stomach had churned at the near mention of his deceased friend’s name, attempting to block out the sudden images of blood clouding its way into his mind, the sound of his friend’s final strangled words and breaths causing his brain to pound against his skull.

He didn’t have to look up to know that Laszlo had leaned back in his chair—the creaking sound of the old thing giving his movement away. “I see.”

Focusing his attention on his friend now John asked, “See what?”

“The way you bounce your leg whenever you feel nervous about bringing up a particular subject which pains you, the way your eyes glaze over with what looks to be old memories you’d rather not recall, the way you try to act as if nothing’s bothering you, but failing at that, too.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Kriezler.”

“You know _exactly_ what I mean, Moore,” Laszlo insisted, not bothering to cover up the exasperation in his voice. “Just because you know that _we_ , as in, the friends that you’ve deliberately haven’t seen since the case of Libby Hatch, who know that you don’t catch on too easily on certain matters, doesn’t fool _me_ from knowing that you _do_ know what I am talking about at this exact moment. You’re not the dim-witted man you make yourself out to be sometimes, John. You’re a clever man when you need be, and you do a good job at covering that up, too.”

There was a long, insufferable silence that followed the Doctor’s speech, before John suddenly stood up from the sofa, slipping on his coat as he made his way to the door. “Good day,” he said in a rush, ashamed at having been psychoanalyzed so easily, and so accurately. Only halfway out the door, he stopped for a brief moment as the Doctor spoke his next words which felt like a bullet to his gut.

“Don’t do this to yourself, John. We care about you, and we worry.”

Instead of responding, he simply closed the door silently behind him as he made his way quietly down the stairs in hopes of not drawing any more attention to him, making it out of the front doors of 283 East Seventeenth Street, walking just to the curb of the road to go about waving down a hansom to take him back to his place.

“Leaving?”

John jumped, momentarily taken aback at the sudden familiar voice interrupting his thoughts. Closing his eyes and taking in a breath, he turned to look down at Stevie. “Steviepipe,” he greeted his young friend through a strained smile. “Haven’t seen you around in a while. Don’t scare me like that.”

“Yeah, ever since Picton’s funeral,” Stevie answered, avoiding John’s attempt at humour with his last remark. He looked at John skeptically. “Which was, if I remember right, three months ago. Where’ve you been?”

“Working,” he said, truthfully. “Not all of us have a Doctor who helps to keep a roof up over our heads and food in our stomachs,” he joked.

“Yeah, yeah. Not all of us have a great sum of inheritance left to us by our grandmothers like you, either. And joke all you want, Mr. Moore, but we’ve all been worried about you, y’know?” Stevie made the point clear by placing his hands on his hips. “You can talk to us, whatever it is that’s bothering you. We don’t bite.”

Just at that moment, a hansom finally stopped by the side of the road, and John swiftly made his way into it. “You’re a good lad, Stevie,” John called out from inside the hansom. “I’ll be back again to visit soon.”

“Tomorrow, drop by again tomorrow.” Stevie demanded. “Cyrus misses you.”

John smiled at Stevie’s attempts. “Tomorrow, then,” he promised. “Wouldn’t want Cyrus to miss me too much.” He told the driver his address and the hansom drove off. He sat back into the seat, thinking back to Laszlo and Stevie’s words. He wasn’t sure exactly why he had come to see Kriezler that day; Stevie hadn’t exaggerated when he’d said that nobody had seen him for three months—after they had buried Rupert, he’d basically fallen off the face of the Earth, at least, from the eyes of his friends. They’d tried contacting him numerous times, in fact. He didn’t want to be rude in admitting that he was simply avoiding them altogether. 

Once out of the hansom and back in his flat at 34 Gramercy Park, where he fleetingly had to dodge Mr. Stevenson at the building’s front entrance to avoid any communication, he took off his coat, throwing it carelessly down onto the wooden floor before sitting himself down tentatively on the edge of the divan—one of the few pieces of furniture he’d brought with him from his grandmother’s house after she’d passed away.

John still remembers that day, clear as water. He’d come back home after a night of gambling and drinking with people he’d never met before, people who he didn’t have an ounce of care for. He’d called out for Harriet from the front door, knowing that she would still be awake at the early hour caring for his grandmother who hadn’t been feeling all too well that day. When Harriet hadn’t responded to any of his shouts, he’d trailed down into his grandmother’s room, where he’d took in his grandmother’s lifeless body laid out on the bed, Harriet weeping next to her. He’d walked out of the room, only making it a few feet before he’d sunk down onto his knees and wept for what seemed like hours: from grief, guilt, and from his own self-hatred. He’d spent his grandmother’s last day on Earth in a bar, gambling away and drinking alongside strangers. He woke up the next morning on the floor with a pillow tucker under his head and a blanket draped over his shivering body.

Laying himself down gently onto his side, he turned his body to face the back pillows of the divan before curling in on himself. With the thoughts of all the people he’d lost at the front of his mind, he gently cried himself to sleep.

⊱⇳⊰  


He’d hoped Stevie wasn’t too disappointed in him when John hadn’t come back the next day after that.

It was now two weeks later, a few hours after having come back home from work at the _New York Times_. He’d thrown himself ungracefully down onto the divan, his eyes still red from having cried just a few moments prior before he heard a thunderous knocking on his door.

“Open the door, John, or I’ll knock it off its hinges!”

That was undoubtedly Sara at the door, and John cringed at the proclamation—Sara would _most definitely_ knock down his door if he didn’t go open it right away.

With a heavy sigh, he pushed himself up off the divan, not bothering to straighten out his work clothes as he sulked his way across the floor.

The knocking on his door continued at an alarming rate, growing louder. “I’m coming, I’m coming! Hell’s bloody bells I’m—”

John just nearly missed the punch to the face as he ducked away from Sara’s extending arm, her hand clutched into a tight fist as it had continuously knocked against his door, even when he had opened it.

“You nearly hit me, Sara!” he blurted out as he slowly straightened his legs, his hands covering his face protectively from Sara’s wrath.

“Sorry,” she said without a note of forgiveness in her voice, huffing in annoyance instead. “Maybe I should have, maybe a hit to the head would knock you back into place. Now, let me through.”

Sara pushed John to the side before he could retaliate, striding into his flat and scanning the mess of a room, before setting her gaze, which was flashing with an alarming amount of anger, back onto him. “Now, Sara,” he took an alarming step back with hands raised up in defence as she took an angry step towards him. “There is no need for violence.”

“Yeah? Then how the _fuck_ else am I supposed to get to the bottom of this, if you care to explain it to me?” Sara crossed her arms together, and John lowered his arms in turn, releasing a breath of air that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. At least he knew that she wouldn’t reach for her gun to shoot him while her arms were crossed.

“And don’t think I won’t reach for my gun to shoot you, John. I am very much capable and won’t feel the ounce of regret, maybe even a bit of pride to get the chance to finally put one through your leg.”

“It’s nice to see you too, Sara.” He instantly regretted his strive at humour when Sara uncrossed her arms and shoved her hand into her coat, where the gun was most definitely located.

“Alright, alright!” John yelled out in alarm, deciding against pushing his luck with her. He crossed over to the divan where he sat back down. “I surrender,” he said in a defeated voice.

“What the Hell happened to you?” Sara asked, her voice taking on a calmer note this time. “Your eyes are red, have you been. . . crying?”

“Why would you think something happened to me?” he asked, avoiding Sara’s last question.

“You know very well that you can’t fool me, John Schuyler Moore,” John cringed at her use of his full name. She continued, “Not only has nobody laid eyes on you for nearly four months, but you apparently showed up at the Doctor’s place unannounced just two weeks ago, and left after what Kriezler explained to me was a ‘very strange one-sided discussion’ involving the both of you. And then you lied to Stevie when he’d asked you to return the next day? You’re a cruel man, John. I thought you were better than this.”

Sara had crossed the floor during her speech, sitting herself down onto a chair which didn’t have dirty laundry decorating it.

“You’re right.”

Sara froze in her seat, staring at John in shock. “Did you just say—”

“You heard me,” he interjected before she could finish. “You’re right. I can’t fool you. So, what would you like to know?”

Sara moved uncomfortably in her seat, having not expected for the situation to go in the direction that it did, John assumed.

“Why have you been avoiding us?” Was the first thing she asked, and John wished it was any other question than that, for his answer would definitely get him shot in the leg. Or worse.

He inhaled slowly, saying his next words carefully in hopes that they wouldn’t offend her. “I didn’t want to be around any of you because I was hoping that you’d all just forget about me, in due time. Sure, it’d hurt to be forgotten, but there are consequences in being close to the people you care about.”

Sara clearly hadn’t expected that answer, either. And John kept waiting for Sara to pull out her gun, though, John was just as surprised when she didn’t.

“You’re such an asshole,” Sara said. “What caused you to think like that?”

John didn’t reply to that. He’d cast his eyes down to look at his hands as he recalled the memories of the faces which still haunted him in his dreams. “I’m tired, you should go.”

“John, don’t make me—”

At the sight of John’s sad, pleading eyes, Sara decided against making her threat. Instead, she stood up and slowly made her way over to the divan, bending down to get to eye level with him she said, “Come to Laszlo’s place tomorrow. Everyone will be there, it’ll be a pleasant gathering, and you _will_ be there, too.”

He merely nodded in understanding as Sara straightened up and made her way out of the door, stopping just under the threshold. “I will shoot you dead if you’re not there tomorrow.”

John smiled, telling Sara that he’d see her the following day.

⊱⇳⊰  


“I thought this was supposed to be a pleasant gathering, not an involuntary confrontation!” He was sat in the centre of a room—where he was manhandled down just a few minutes earlier into a chair by two very angry Jewish brothers—surrounded by all of his colleagues. Nowhere to flee in sight as they stood around him in a circle. “I could call this in to the police as a kidnapping!”

“ _We_ are the police,” Marcus rolled his eyes, as Lucius did the same. “Or have you ignored us for so long that you’ve forgotten what our jobs are?”

“And nobody is going to believe you, either way!” Stevie said next. “You know why? Because you’re a _liar_ , Mr. Moore! A big, fat liar!”

“Just for your own information, Taggert, I may have broken my promise to you, but I am _not_ fat!”

“Don’t be modest, John.” Sara said next, her mouth quirked up into a sly smile. “That shirt does seem a bit snug on you than it did a few months ago.”

John’s jaw dropped open in shock at that. “Now _that’s_ cruel, Sara.”

He turned his head to look at a chuckling Cyrus. “Well, looks like he does have a sense of humour after all! Good man, Cyrus!”

“John.”

At that, everyone turned to face Laszlo, who wasn’t as much into the joking mood as everyone else was. “Sara’s already told us what you told her yesterday. Now, what made you decide that avoiding your friends would be a good thing? What did you mean by ‘there are consequences in being close to the people you care about’?”

John slowly cowered in on himself as everyone's eyes turned to face him, waiting for his undeniable explanation to why he’d been acting so off after the case of Libby Hatch. “I’d feel much better if I got drunk before. . . you know. . . before I pour my bleeding heart out to all of you.”

“No time for that,” Sara said. “We’re all here and listening. Whatever it is, we can take it.”

But could _he_ take it?

John glanced up at his friends, seeing their concerned gazes directed at him. Had he really worried them all that much?

“Well? Out with it!” Stevie huffed in annoyance. “We don’t have all day!”

“Stevie, give him a moment,” Lucius advised calmly.

Stevie glared at him. “He’s had quite enough time while he was _avoiding_ us.”

“I. . . ” John began, not wanting his friends to yell at him anymore, pausing for a moment as they all brought their attention back on him. He gathered up the strength he needed before he continued. “I… don’t wanna lose any more of you. It's like I bring bad luck to the group, and losing the people I care about—it hurts. . . too much.”

“You’re not losing any of us, John. What do you mean, exactly? Be more specific.” Lucius asked.

“Whoever I get close to. . . ” John’s heart began to ache terribly. “They end up. . . dead.”

“It’s not your fault what happened to Rupert, John.” Laszlo encouraged him, as everyone nodded in agreement. “And you know that.”

“If I hadn’t gotten him involved in the case, he’d still be alive. If he'd come _back_ with us instead of staying behind at the office. . . ”

Everyone looked at each other at that, a heavy silence filling the room before anybody spoke next.

“He wanted to be a part of it. There was nothing you could’ve done to change his mind. We needed him, and then he decided, on his own behalf, to help us. So, it’s still not your fault,” Marcus said.

John took the information in, seeing some light in the truth that it held. Though, he still didn’t feel swayed. “My grandmother. . . if I had been there for her. . . “

“John, no matter what you could’ve done that day, it wouldn’t have changed anything. Don’t blame yourself for that. Your grandmother loved you, and it’s clear as day that you loved her, too. She lived a good enough life, and the inheritance that she left you just proves how much you meant to her,” Sara said.

“But. . . I wasn’t there for her last moments.”

“You couldn’t have know, John.” Laszlo continued from where Sara left off. “Sara’s right, you meant a lot to her. She wouldn’t want you wasting your life away blaming yourself.”

John nodded in agreement, allowing their words to sink in. He cast his eyes down as a rush of emotions suddenly soared through him.

“John, what’s wrong?” Marcus stepped forwards, placing a hand on John’s shoulder. “You’re shaking.”

“Joseph. . .”

“Joseph?” Lucius asked.

“The boy from The Golden Rule,” Cyrus answered. “One of Beecham’s final victims.”

“I. . . I was going to. . .”

“You were going to what, John?” Sara asked.

“I. . . “ John didn’t finish his sentence, though, before tears started to pour out of his eyes, causing a few people around him to get teary eyed at the sight as well.

“John, please,” Sara pleaded. “What are you trying to tell us about Joseph?”

John didn’t make a move to answer her, instead focusing on stopping the flow of tears which seemed to flow of out no matter how hard he tried to stop them. He felt so weak, crying in front of his colleagues.

After a few, silent moment passed by, Laszlo said in a quiet voice, “You were going to adopt him.”

Everyoned gawked at Kriezler for a moment, before turning back to look at John.

“Is that true, John?” Sara asked softly as tears brimmed at her eyes.

He ignored her question, yet again, as the truth was finally laid out in the open. “He _mutilated_ him,” John snarled, not bothering to cover up the anger finally bubbling up out of him. “Packaged him up, left him on the doorstep like _garbage_.”

He wiped at the tears which stained his face, looking up at his friend before he continued. “Yes, I was going to adopt him. John Beecham took that away from me. I would’ve given Joseph everything: comfortable clothes, an education, a home, a father. It would’ve been an honour to call him my. . . _my son_.”

Nobody bothered in holding back their tears any longer, even Cyrus had a few droplets trail down his cheeks which he didn’t wipe away at. Marcus kept his hand on John’s shoulder, looking down at his seated friend with sadness. “His death was avenged, John. Beecham didn’t get away with it.”

John appreciated his friend’s attempt at making him feel better, but he didn’t want to admit that Beecham did win in the end by taking away the one person he’d learned to care for along the way.

“You can’t control these things. People die, all the time. You can’t stop it, but I _promise_ you this, John,” Laszlo stepped forwards to place his hand on John’s other shoulder. “You aren’t losing any one of us anytime soon.”

John nodded, still unsure of himself. "But. . ."

"Don't allow yourself to be Beecham and Hatch's final hit, John."

Laszlo's words pierced him through the heart, John imagining the feeling of it having felt close to when El Niño's arrow pierced its way though Libby's neck. "I won't be, I promise you that."

“That’s the spirit, Mr. Moore! You ain’t getting rid of us. We’re like leeches, always sticking to each other!” Stevie exclaimed, causing everybody to laugh in teary response.

“Thanks, Steviepipe.” John smiled in return.

“So, John, you aren’t going to avoid us any more? No more disappearing off for another four months?” Laszlo asked.

“No, Laz. No more of that.” John smiled up at his friend.

“Good,” Laszlo patted his shoulder. “And don’t call me Laz.”

“Group hug!” Lucius suddenly announced.

“No—” 

John didn’t have time to reject against the idea before being encompassed in warm arms as everybody went in for the hug. John couldn’t deny that he really didn’t deserve such caring friends.

“Well, I’m starving.” Sara announced once everybody straightened up after the hug, clapping her hands together so that all of the attention was on her now. “Could you get us into Del’s, Laszlo?”

“Absolutely. I think this day deserves to be celebrated, wouldn’t you all say?”

Everybody nodded in agreement, starting to making their way towards the front door as John’s voice suddenly rose up from behind them.

“Do I really look like I’ve gained weight?” John asked, with a hint of sadness in his voice.

Everybody groaned in response.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very judgmental with the things I write because I never know if it's cringey or whatnot, and I'm not really good with intense emotions but, either way, here it is!
> 
> Some of the things in the fic are my own headcannon's, for example, the idea that John was planning on adopting Joseph after catching Beecham. The book really portrayed their relationship together so well and it was so Innocent and Pure and, well, John and Joseph deserved better than what Caleb Carr did to them ;-; I think John's grandmother would've loved Joseph as another grandson.
> 
> Comments are much appreciated! Yell with me!


End file.
